Move to Massachusetts, It's Best

Here's a reasonably convincing article at Slate which boosts that far-left bastion of liberalism, Massachusetts. There's some surprising and counter-intuitive statistics included.

Who Invented Plywood?

Sometime ago there was a listing of the most important inventions of the 20th century.  I thought of that while viewing this video on plywood (it's rather arty and for all the warning about table saws, they don't use a guard)--I owe a hat tip to someone, not sure who.

Anyhow, I went to Wikipedia and found the answer(s):

1. the ancient Egyptians
2. Imannuel Nobel, father of the Alfred of dynamite fame.  Although his Wikipedia entry just credits him with inventing the lathe used in plywood manufacture, but that may have been the key innovation needed to make plywood on a mass scale.

The father invents something which is a prerequisite to modern society and the son something to destroy prerequisites to modern society.  And so it goes.

Misinformation from the Times: Food

The Times has an interview with an NIH mathematician today who says, in part:

Did you ever solve the question posed to you when you were first hired — what caused the obesity epidemic?

We think so. And it’s something very simple, very obvious, something that few want to hear: The epidemic was caused by the overproduction of food in the United States.

Beginning in the 1970s, there was a change in national agricultural policy. Instead of the government paying farmers not to engage in full production, as was the practice, they were encouraged to grow as much food as they could. At the same time, technological changes and the “green revolution” made our farms much more productive. The price of food plummeted, while the number of calories available to the average American grew by about 1,000 a day.

Well, what do people do when there is extra food around? They eat it! This, of course, is a tremendously controversial idea. However, the model shows that increase in food more than explains the increase in weight.

Sounds to me as if he's been reading Mr. Pollan.  The truth of course is there was no such long lasting change in policy. Yes, Earl Butz said "fence row to fence row", but his impact on farm policy was mostly gone by the time Jimmy Carter was elected .  We had annual production adjustment programs into the 1990's and beginning in 1986 removed millions of acres of cropland from production through CRP.

Can Obama Win Alaska?

On this chart showing the support within different states for same-sex civil marriage, Alaska sticks out as a McCain supporting state which also supports SSCM. Makes me wonder: since Palin won't be on the Republican ticket in 2012 is there a chance for Obama to win Alaska?  Nah, probably not.  Just a day-dream.

More Moslems Than Methodists in IL?

That's what John Phipps reports.

USDA Birthday: Obama Ignores the Good Stuff

The President issues a proclamation noting the 150th birthday of USDA.  He touches on conservation, food safety, electrification, food stamps, research, market expansion (domestic and foreign), but entirely ignores anything which could be construed as endorsing AAA/ASCS/FSA.  :-( Leaves out crop insurance as well.  :-)

Summary of ARC

From Gary Schnitkey at IL extension, a summary of the Agricultural Risk Coverage program in the Senate Ag's bill:

Summary

ARC will make payments if revenues reach lower levels. In years in which revenue declines, ARC payments will be useful to farmers.

ARC payments will offset some of the losses in gross revenue. The entire loss will not be covered because 1) the .89 factor used to calculate the guarantee effectively puts an 11% deductible on revenue losses, 2) payments are a factor of the shortfall (.80 for the county program and .65 for the farm program), and 3) ARC payments are capped at 10% of benchmark revenue.

If prices are persistently low for several years, ARC payments will decline over time as lower prices enter into the calculation of benchmark revenue. Hence, ARC will provide payments in early years of a multi-year price decline, eventually though farmers will need to fully adjust to price declines as ARC payment decline.

A couple of thoughts:

• there's a cap on the acres (average of plantings 2004-8) which presumably could replace the acreage base, but may involve such things as: the initial establishment and the right to appeal, and the problems of handling prevented planting, CRP acreage, rotations, and changes from one crop to another.  Reminds me of the days of establishing NCA's and acreage bases.
• interesting issue on collecting data--do you collect production data for every participant every year, or only if there's a possibility/probability of qualifying for ARC payment?

The Case for Crop Insurance vs. Ad Hoc Disaster

Via Farm Policy, here's 3 paragraphs from a case for crop insurance, a John Mages op-ed:

Crop insurance is a public-private partnership, designed to ensure that when disaster strikes, the private sector – crop insurance companies – are there to help shoulder the risk and the financial burden of rebuilding.  Crop insurance policies are purchased by the farmer and suited to the farmer’s needs, comfort with risk and financial situation.

In the past, before purchasing crop insurance was the widespread and widely available option, disasters like last year’s would have triggered large, stand-alone disaster bills in Congress, aimed at trying to save as many farms as possible.  Those bills would have cost taxpayers dearly, and unfortunately, would have taken months, or even several years to finally get into the hands of the farmers who need the help.  Not a good situation for either party involved.

In 2011, with 80 percent of eligible lands protected by crop insurance, private sector companies paid out in excess of$10.7 billion in payments to farmers who had purchased plans and suffered losses.  Those checks were often in the hands of the farmers in 30 days or less after they completed the necessary paper work.  It’s because of the effectiveness and efficiency of crop insurance that many of us are in our fields planting today instead of being forced to auction off our farms.

 Since I've been implicitly and explicitly critical of crop insurance, it's only fair to recognize the counter-arguments.  I'm proud of the work my shop did on disaster programs and payments over the years, but it's true enough that an ad hoc program doesn't work as well as having something in place from year to year.

Be Negative to Your Children?

Should you be more negative to your children than anyone else? Should you treat your employees better than your children?  That's what's implied in this table from a post at Barking Up the Wrong Tree reporting research from this book.  The question is: if you want the best relationship, what's the ideal ratio of positive interactions to negative.  For example, parents should praise their children 3 times for each time they reprove them, etc.  If the research is right, I was a lousy boss.  

Of course the point is to be mostly positive to everyone.

Pot, Locavores, and the Farm Bill

Since the beginning, the farm bill has sought to protect farmers from price risk and weather risk, the risk of low prices through overproduction and the risk of low production from.bad weather.  The methods provided in the laws have varied, including cartels, supply management, crop insurance and disaster payments, all of which are conditioned on the basic fact that in a free market, farmers are price takers, mostly at the mercy of those who buy from them.

Because marijuana is illegal, you don't see a lot of discussion about its economics, so I've only vague impressions to go on. (See this PBS piece which looks at costs and volume.)Because pot is illegal, its dealers are insulated from market pressures: once they've established themselves in an area, they tend to have a relatively stable monopoly.  So the tendency is for basically stable networks of growers-dealers-buyers, meaning prices are pretty stable. (Can I find a parallel with contract growers of poultry, pork, etc., which also have stable networks?)  And because pot is illegal, there's a high entry cost for growers. That's what "illegal" means. But it also means that "weather risk" can extend to "law risk"--the chances of a bust.

My impression is that the importation of marijuana is down, and domestic growing is up.  In that sense, the pot industry has been moving in the direction of  locavore. As "grow houses" have proliferated, it's become more localized and more production oriented, more industrial, less organic.

Comes now the legalization of "medical marijuana" (I use quotes because I think it's really a backdoor way to semi-legalize marijuana) which seems to have disrupted the pot economy, according to an article in today's NYTimes Post, for which I can't find the url. (I'll try to add it later.)

On the one hand you have competition among the vendors, both on quality and price.  On the other you have growers having problems. Bottom line is the bottom has dropped out of the price, with big repercussions on the economy of such counties as Humboldt, CA.

One wonders when pot will make it into the farm bill?